


put all of your anger on

by casdoms (moffwithhishead)



Series: season 10 codas [14]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Allusions to Suicide, Charlie's Death, Depression, Episode Tag, Established Relationship, M/M, Mark of Cain, spoilers for 10.21
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:24:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3896209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moffwithhishead/pseuds/casdoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas’ face softens a fraction but Dean’s not fooled. He can still feel and hear the other man’s Grace raging against the Mark. He can feel and hear the Mark’s indignant fury over being this close to something so pure. </p><p>He wonders if his friend can feel it too because Cas turns away after a moment, rubbing his hand over his face, “Did you...?” </p><p>“No,” Dean snips a little. “I didn’t.” </p><p>He wanted to. He wants to. But he didn’t and he hasn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	put all of your anger on

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sad and angry and I want dean to be sad and angry and be allowed to grieve his best friend and to seek comfort in the people he feels like he can trust. I don't know man, I'm just sad and I want this, okay?

Dean kicks Sam out of the bathroom.

“But -” 

His brother tries to protest but Dean’s voice drops an octave or six and he growls, “Get. The fuck.  _Out_.” 

Sam goes out to the Impala with his tail between his legs and Dean hears him puke just outside of the motel room door before the sound of it slamming shut echoes dully in the bathroom. 

He closes his eyes and tries to collect his breathing. 

There’s a million emotions flying through him right now and he’s not sure what’s the Mark and what’s his own feelings.

It doesn’t matter though, not anymore. Not after this.

For the first time, Dean voluntarily lets go. He lets the Mark swallow him whole, drag him into the deepest pits of evil that it can find. He feels the anger wash over him in waves, the power crashing over that in tsunami’s and he throws a fist into the wall next to him.

The sheetrock caves in immediately. 

His hands are shaking and he doesn’t know what to do. He knows what he wants to do - go out to the car, grab the machete,  _kill kill kill_  - but he knows that he can’t. Not right now.

Even through the haze of the Mark, he knows Charlie deserves better than that.

So he lets the Mark swallow him down further, push his soul more to the side, as he bends down and takes off his jacket. He lays it down over her (and he’s not sure if it’s to protect her or himself) and picks her up out of the tub. 

His face is grim as he walks outside with her body in hand, ignoring the sounds of Sam retching by the dumpsters. 

He can’t put her in the trunk. He can’t.

Dean yanks the Impala’s back door open and shoves the stuff on the seat onto the floor without preamble. 

He’s violent in a way he’s never let himself be and it’s just towards inanimate objects. Towards replacements for where his anger and his rage are actually directed. 

But the way he lays Charlie down is gentle if not a little reverent. 

He goes around to the trunk and pulls out one of his favorite hoodies, gently resting it under her head like a pillow.

Rest in peace. That’s what people say, right?

He’s gonna do everything he can to give her that. 

Dean shuts the Impala’s door carefully and rests his head on the cool, wet metal for a moment while he breathes. 

The Mark may be at the forefront now but for the moment, Dean is still there. He’s still along for the ride and he can still feel, even if it’s the dulled version the Mark’s been providing him with all this time. 

He slams his fist against the roof of the Impala and makes a pained noise, not sure who he’s more mad at.

It hurts, a little bit, and it makes him stand up straight and march back into the motel room. 

Charlie’s stuff is strewn all over the room but it doesn’t look like the Stynes took much of anything. It occurs to Dean that they’re probably not that far from the motel, he could probably find them if he looked hard enough, but -

He wants to take Charlie home.

So he grabs what he can see, even going so far as to get on his knees and pull some books out from under the shitty bed. 

He finds her phone under there, mostly unharmed, and lets out an involuntary growl when he presses the lock button and sees a picture that Sam took of her, Dean and Cas that night at the bunker. 

It makes him stop in his tracks, his eyes closing as the tears and the rage well up at the same time. 

How many people have to die  _for_  them?  _Because_  of them?

“God,” he laughs mirthlessly at himself, “Poison.” 

Dean pushes himself up and shoves her phone in his back pocket before stuffing everything he found into her backpack.

His walk out of the motel room is more somber this time as the reality seems to set in.

He looks over at Sam, who’s sitting on the curb next to the dumpster with his face in his hands and his shoulders shaking, and barks out angrily, “ _Get in the fucking car_.” 

The real part of him that’s still in his head, watching all this happen numbly, winces at the way Sam flinches and leaps to his feet. 

He spent all these years terrified of becoming John and all it took for that to happen was turning into a Knight of Hell. Demon. Demon-human hybrid. 

What the fuck ever. 

Dean sets the bag on the floor behind the drivers seat before sliding in himself, starting the car before Sam’s even inside it. 

He gags again when he opens the door and sees Charlie laying on the backseat, the jacket having slipped and her face visible this time.

If it wasn’t for the blood, it would look like she was sleeping.

“Eyes forward, Sammy,” Dean snaps and revs the engine a little. “Get in the fucking car.” 

Sam shrinks in on himself a little and slides into the seat.

Dean speeds out of the parking lot.

* * *

 

The car ride back to the bunker was silent.

Sam hadn’t tried to say anything and Dean hadn’t tried to get him to talk either.

He didn’t want to hear what his brother had to say about this. He didn’t want to hear the reasons or the justifications. 

Despite the Mark still being the one in the drivers seat here, he still doesn’t want to kill his little brother. 

They pull into the garage and Dean barely pulls the key out of the ignition before he gets out of the Impala and goes around to the trunk. He grabs their bags and weapons and comes back around again, drops them in Sam’s lap.

“Take these inside.” 

“ _Dean_...” Sam says softly, a little helplessly, and looks like he wants to cry all over again. “I’m -” 

The growl tears its way out of his chest before he has a chance to stop it, “ _Don’t_ , Sam.” 

He gives his brother a cold, hard look and briefly wonders if his eyes flash at all this time, “Just... don’t.” 

Sam steps out of the Impala and nods, hovering around the stairs for a second with his arms full of their things. He looks like he’s going to say something again but Dean gives him a look, one he’d perfected when his little brother was a teenager, and Sam leaves without a fuss. 

As soon as he hears the garage door shut, Dean slams the Impala’s door shut, not even caring that he can hear the window rattling. 

He stands there for a moment, staring at Sam’s seat.

Staring at the seat that Charlie sat in. Where they ate take out and she introduced him to new music. The same seat where she gave him his iPod, laughing at his face when he saw the color. The same seat where he’d cried and she’d rubbed his back through it, promising that everything would be okay and they’d figure it out. 

He feels the tears rolling down his cheeks and the Mark throbbing on his arm.

He moves slowly to the back door of the Impala and opens it up. He keeps his eyes on her hand when he picks her up, ignores the blood that’s soaked through his jacket. 

“It’s gonna be okay kiddo,” he promises her quietly as he moves into the bunker, towards a room where she’ll be safe until they can get the pyre set up.

“I promise,” Dean keeps his eyes ahead of him, kicking the door open to the walk in freezer a bit more aggressively than he needs to, “I’m going to find them. And I am going to  _rip them apart_  with my bare hands.” 

In his mind, he can see Charlie rolling her eyes at him and calling him a drama queen.

She’d tell him that she died to protect him, to give him a fighting chance and that she didn’t regret it, and Dean would threaten to punch her in the face. She didn’t deserve this.

And he sure as hell doesn’t deserve somebody who’s willing to make that sacrifice. 

Dean sets her down gently on the cot that’s been in here since -

He wants to laugh at himself because it’s been a little over a year and he still can’t think about Kevin without wanting to throw himself in front of something fast and heavy. 

When he stands up again and sees her face - eyes closed, face soft, looking exactly the same as she had when she fell asleep in Dean’s bed with her head on his shoulder - he feels the Mark flare up again. He feels a sob claw its way out of his chest.

His knees give out after a moment and there’s nothing for him to catch himself on so he falls with a hard thud.

The sobs come one on top of the other, making his whole body shake with the force of his grief, and he screams something at the top of his lungs. It echoes on the metal walls of the room and he slams his fists into the concrete floor, another anguished noise escaping him. 

He doesn’t stop for a while. 

* * *

 

When he finally gets himself under control again, he feels number than he has in months. 

He pulls his hoodie up to cover Charlie’s face, stopping for a moment to apologize again, before turning and walking out of the room like a man on a mission. 

He breezes through the hallways, heading for his room, and doesn’t even stop when he bumps into Sam, just shoves him out of the way. 

He hears his brother hit the wall with a startled ‘oof’ but he doesn’t stop until he’s standing in his bedroom, staring at the wall above his bed. 

Cas had hidden his axe from Purgatory the last time he was here but he left Dean with a few other options. The Mark takes stock of all of them, trying to decide which will be the best substitute for the First Blade. 

He catches himself and shakes his head to snap himself out of it.

His phone. He’s here for his phone and clean clothes. 

Dean breezes through his room like a tornado, not bothering to keep things neat or folded like he normally does. He shoves on a new pair of jeans, ones that aren’t half-frozen and have blood on them.

He rips his t-shirt trying to take it off and just throws it away in disgust before yanking a new one on. 

The blood on his hands makes him stop for half a beat, his stomach flipping uneasily, before he grabs his dirty jeans and wipes them hard and fast until the red disappears. 

His hands are raw now and they hurt but they’re clean.

For now. 

“Dean,” Sam’s voice startles him out of the semi-trance from where he’s standing in the doorway. “Where are you going?” 

He sounds nervous. Good. Kid’s still got self-preservation instincts. 

“Out,” Dean replies flatly and grabs a flannel and a jacket from his closet. He grabs his phone from the bedside table where it’s charging - his real one, not the one he takes on cases - and shoves past Sam on the way out of the room.

Sam hesitates for a second before following behind his brother as he stalks back to the garage, “Will you - you’re -” He swallows audibly and it feels like a bomb going off in the quiet, echoey hallway, “You’re coming back, right?” 

He’s not sure. Probably.

For Charlie.

Dean just grunts in an answer and takes the stairs to the garage two at a time, throwing the door open without preamble. 

Sam stays at the top of the stairs and watches his brother stomp over to the motorcycle he’s been working on the past few weeks. 

He stops just long enough to pull the flannel and the jacket on, hesitates before grabbing a helmet from the shelf. He pulls it on resentfully, like he’s doing it out of habit and mad about it. 

Dean revs the engine and peals out of the garage without so much as a second glance, leaving his brother in the dust. 

He already knows where he’s going. 

* * *

 

With the Mark in control now, apparently this whole radar thing goes both ways.

Cas knows where Dean is, if he concentrates hard enough, and Dean knows where Cas is. He could feel his Grace taunting the Mark even back at the bunker and it doesn’t take him long to pull into the parking lot.

He was reckless in driving here, jumping on sidewalks and weaving in and out of traffic, and he stops just short of driving the motorcycle through the damn front door of whatever the hell this place is.

The smell - he can smell that his brother has been here. A lot. 

He smells a vaguely familiar, dark and heavy smell. Herbs and smoke and remnants of Hell. Rowena.

He smells pork rinds and coffee and something he can’t put his finger on, something that makes the Mark’s hackles rise. Castiel. 

He smells Mountain Dew and Cheeto’s and faith - cinnamon and his cologne. He smells Charlie. 

Dean shoves the door open and storms his way into the cellar, apparently catching Cas off guard because he looks panicked.

“Dean!” He stammers for a second, his eyes wide, “What - I -” 

“Cas,” Dean feels a tendril of satisfaction when he realizes how angry he sounds, “If you’re planning on lying to me right now, I’d suggest you shut the fuck up.” 

His best friends takes approximately three seconds to deflate and look away guiltily, “I don’t want to lie to you.”

Dean ignores that comment for the moment, “Charlie’s dead.” 

Cas’ eyes snap up and Dean can  _see_  it - he can see the way his Grace flares and he can hear the anguished noise it makes.

“She’s -” he stammers again, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

“The Stynes,” Dean supplies the answer to the unasked question.

Castiel sucks in a breath and moves over to the table, resting against it to catch his breath. 

It startles a slightly mirthless laugh out of him, makes the Mark swell with triumph. 

The angel glares at him, opening his mouth to ask what’s so funny, before his face contorts sadly. Dean realizes that Cas is only just now noticing.

“Dean...” His voice is low, almost lecturing, “What did you  _do_?” 

He flexes his hands, closing them around the phantom blade, tries to breathe through his nose when he answers, “I gave in.” 

Cas stands up abruptly and moves over to him, getting in Dean’s face like he has no self-preservation skills, “ _Why?_ ” He looks like he’s not sure if he wants to punch Dean or kill him.

The Mark is begging for both, begging for an excuse. 

Dean meets his eyes and glares, gripping his jeans so hard his knuckles turn white, “Because it was this or kill Sam. It was this or break down crying over my best friend’s dead body.” 

Because he didn’t know how to carry anymore guilt.

Cas’ face softens a fraction but Dean’s not fooled. He can still feel and hear the other man’s Grace raging against the Mark. He can feel and hear the Mark’s indignant fury over being this close to something so pure. 

He wonders if his friend can feel it too because Cas turns away after a moment, rubbing his hand over his face, “Did you...?” 

“No,” Dean snips a little. “I didn’t.” 

He wanted to. He wants to. But he didn’t and he hasn’t. 

Cas nods and catalogues this information away, doing a quick lap around the room (dungeon?), “Good, good...” 

Dean flexes his jaw and rests back against the wall behind him, swallowing down that absolutely nothing about this is  _good_.

The other man stops for a second and turns to stare curiously at Dean, “Why are you here?” 

The question makes him pause, makes him shift on his feet a little and look at the floor. He doesn’t have an answer, not really.

He’d wanted - no, he  _needed_  - to get out of the bunker before he did something. He’d thought about going down to Donnie’s bar and getting black out drunk. He’d thought about breaking into the nearest prison, killing as many inmates as he could get his hands on. He’d thought about chasing down the Stynes and ripping the entire gang of Frankenfucks to literal shreds. 

But he’d let himself be pulled by something to come see Cas.

The other man apparently gets that without an explanation because he smiles despite himself and ducks his head a little.

Cas moves over to Dean slowly and rests against the wall next to him, mirroring his pose. Dean closes his eyes and tries to breathe through the anger rolling off the Mark, tries to breathe through the anxiety of being this close to Cas when he’s so fucked up.

He feels a hand settle on his wrist, just below the Mark, and he lets Cas slip their fingers together, their fingers intertwine. 

The Mark surges with anger but the Dean in the metaphorical passenger seat feels calmer. Safer. 

He turns his head just enough to open one eye, “How do I look?” 

“Like shit,” Castiel answers quietly, his thumb rubbing over the back of Dean’s hand. 

Dean snorts and moves, resting his forehead on Cas’ shoulder with a tired sigh, “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he hums in response and presses a kiss to Dean’s temple.

Neither one of them says anything for a while, both of them trying to figure out how to absorb this new development, trying to sort through their feelings. Dean spends a lot of the time trying to tamp down the Mark.

“I don’t know how long this is gonna last,” Dean breathes out eventually, hating how much his voice is shaking.

Cas tightens his hand a little bit, “What do you mean?”

Dean laughs hollowly, moving so he can rest their foreheads together, “This. Me still being...” He shrugs a little bit with a sad smile on his face, “Y’know.” 

He feels Cas’ thumb on the back of his hand again.

“You’ve been fighting for so long,” Cas murmurs tiredly, heartbreak written clear over his face. “You can fight a little bit longer.” 

Dean swallows, his voice thick and rough, “Yeah... but Cas.”

He lets out another shaky breath and squeezes his eyes closed, “Charlie... she  _died_  because of me. For me. Kevin...” He ignores the lurch in his stomach, “That’s on me. Tessa, Sarah, Jo, Ellen, mom, dad, Ash... you. The list goes on and on. People who died for us.” 

He feels more tears well up in his eyes and tries to swallow them back down, “I can’t. I can’t keep letting it happen.” 

“Dean,” Cas’ voice breaks a little bit, “This isn’t your fault.” 

“Sam kept the book to save me. Sam roped Charlie into this, roped you into it, to save me...” He opens his eyes, knows that they flash black for a second, “So, yeah, Cas. This one is kinda my fault.” 

He takes a breath, “And if I keep fighting? You’re gonna die. Sammy’s gonna die. Hell, fuckin’ Garth is probably gonna die.” 

Dean laughs but it sounds like a sob and he leans into it when Cas wraps his arms around him, tucking his face into his neck and ignoring the Mark  _screaming_. 

“I can’t do it,” he manages to get out in between sobs, “I can’t let it happen again.” 

Cas makes a pained noise and tightens his arms around Dean, ignoring the smoke and the horns he can see, the tail flicking behind them, “We  _won’t_.” 

“Yeah,” Dean laughs again and grips Cas’ trenchcoat tighter, “We will.” 

Something in Dean must snap because he starts angry sobbing, the Mark breaking through the control he’s got, and pushes Cas away from him.

“Hey, hey hey,” Cas moves forward and grabs Dean’s arms quickly, using his mojo to stop him from pulling away.

Dean throws his body around, trying to get away from his friend, but Cas grabbing his head stops him.

“ _Dean_ ,” he tries again, his voice full of the righteous fury that Dean’s missed so much.

He opens his eyes a little and takes a breath, gasping in as much air as he can.

“I love you,” Cas sounds so determined and so fucking annoyed. “I love you and I would tear down the entire world for you if you needed me to, Dean, but I am  _not_  giving up on you.”

His mouth opens to say something back but Cas growls a little, “I don’t care if you have the Mark, I don’t care if you’re a demon. You are still  _you_.” 

He sets a hand on the middle of Dean’s chest and his face softens but his voice doesn’t, “This, right here. This is where your soul is. The Mark is doing everything it can to cover it, to block it out and kill it, but your soul is  _still there_.” 

Cas’ eyes look a little desperate, “It is still strong and bright and  _good_  and it is still fighting like hell for you, Dean Winchester.”

“It’s losing,” he croaks out, hating how broken he sounds.

“But it hasn’t lost yet,” Cas points out, his face hard in a mask of confidence.

It’s so completely ridiculous, bordering on cliche, that it startles a laugh out of him. 

Cas smiles, loosens his hands just a little bit on Dean’s face, “Charlie’s death was  _wrong_. It was wrong and disgusting and pointless and it wasn’t  _fair_. It was a tragedy in the purest sense...” 

He rests their foreheads together again, setting a hand on the back of Dean’s neck, “But she wouldn’t want you to give up just because of this.”

“You met her twice,” Dean mumbles, closing his eyes again so he doesn’t have to see the conviction Cas feels in what he’s saying. 

“And I saw her soul both times,” Cas counters gently, his thumb brushing tears off of Dean’s face. “And she loves you so much, Dean... you are her best friend, her brother. You are her  _hero_.”

Dean whines a little bit, “Was.”

“No,” he shakes his head, bumping their noses together, “You still are. She died to protect you, just as you would have done the same if the roles were reversed.”

It hurts and it’s a low blow but it’s true.  _God_ , it’s so true. 

“I don’t know if I want to fight it anymore,” he admits in a whisper.

He doesn’t have to have his eyes open to know that Cas’ face cycles through about sixteen different versions of hurt and frustration.

Cas lets out a breath, the warmth ghosting over Dean’s face, and moves so he can press a kiss to his forehead, “I know, Dean... I know.” 

* * *

 

He stays there all night with Cas, alternating between crying and getting angry.

In the morning he gets a text from Sam and he barely stops himself from throwing his phone across the room, “He wants to do the funeral today.” 

Cas wraps his arms around Dean from behind and presses a gentle kiss to the back of his neck, “Would you like me to come with you...?”

He would. He would really like to stay here with Cas where he doesn’t feel guilty for being angry. Where he’s not treated like a bad guy for handing over the drivers seat to the Mark. 

He shakes his head though and rests back against Cas for a moment. He wants to remember this feeling.

Cas walks him back out to the bike and pulls him into a kiss before he can get on it - a real, desperate, heartbroken kiss. A goodbye, maybe. 

Dean gives just as good as he’s getting and he knows that if Cas was still human, the grip he’s got on his hips would leave huge bruises. If he lets go, this is real. If he leaves, he has to burn his best friend’s body and face the reality of the situation.

If he lets go, he might never see Cas again.

Eventually they pull back, and the realization that Dean doesn’t really need to breathe makes their chests ache in tandem. 

“I can’t remember if I ever said it, Cas,” Dean mumbles, their foreheads resting together again with his eyes closed, “But... I love you, okay? I just -” He lets out a breath that might be a laugh, might be panic, “I need you to know that. Okay?”

Cas nods and tightens his grip on Dean’s hips in return, “I know.” 

An involuntary smile quirks on his face that comes with a healthy dose of grief and nostalgia and he opens his eyes to shove Cas away gently. His voice is fond when he says, “Did you just Han Solo me?” 

Cas doesn’t look like he wants to joke.

“If I say it back, then it’s goodbye.” 

Dean sucks in a sharp breath but doesn’t say anything because, well... yeah.

“Okay,” he breathes out a little bit and climbs onto the bike, straddling the seat, “So... not goodbye.” 

“Later,” Cas says, taking a step back, his eyes downcast. “It’s see you later.” 

Dean watches him for a moment, not caring that his own heartbreak is written clearly across his face, and nods.

He turns on the bike and looks up at Cas with the helmet in his hands, “So...” He’s not even trying to hide it, his poor attempt at trying to memorize every detail of his face, “Later.” 

Cas smiles sadly, nodding a little, “Later.”

Dean nods and drives off quickly before he can change his mind.

Even the Mark feels emptier.


End file.
